Daily Card Redesign #169: Pretender's Claim

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being scrapped late during its own set's development. I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color(s), is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

ORIGINAL:

REDESIGN:

Oof. I would have given this more time to develop into something that actually gave choices to be made by a player to feel more like what the art is implying about what's going on mechanically, but I've run out of time.

So, the idea for this incarnation is that the guy that is standing with the guards is the opponent, pleading to spare his troops' lives in exchange for a payment to the king/lord-like person sitting in the throne in the background (that's you).